“Straight lines go too quickly to appreciate the pleasures of the journey. They rush straight to their target and then die in the very moment of their triumph without having thought, loved, suffered or enjoyed themselves…It is another story with curved lines. The song of the curved line is called happiness.”

I touched on the subject of leg proportions in my last post, but I didn’t get very specific at the time. The leg is divided into three major portions: the thigh, the calf, and the foot. For humans, we walk on our heels, and the thigh and the calf are about equal lengths. Since the legs make up roughly half a person’s height, that means that the calf and the thigh are each about one-quarter of the figure’s total height.

One way to make a standing pose more interesting is to make use of the concept of contrapposto (warning for artistic nudity at the link). Basically, this is referring to when a figure’s weight is more on one leg than the other, resulting in their shoulders and hips being canted at different angles. This makes for a more dynamic and life-like pose.

[Photo source - Also, it is Michelangelo’s David and I did add the censor myself, so, you know. Artistic nudity again.]

Another thing to keep in mind while drawing poses is the line of action, which flows in the direction of your character’s movement (typically, it follows their spine). It’s best to decide on this line early on, since it affects the placement of everything else.

Practicing with references is also really, really helpful. (And in fact, that’s exactly what I was doing in the that fire poi post
you mentioned!) There are a couple of ways to do this. Drawing from
life is great if you can take a class (or bribe a friend into holding
still) but that’s not always an option. The website Pixlovely has a few great tools geared towards helping artists practice gesture drawing with human and animal subjects. You could also browse a stock image gallery
or search Google to find a particular pose. Personally, I like working
from video screenshots, especially for more action-y poses. The image
quality isn’t usually as high as a stock photo, but by watching the
video I can get a sense of the overall movement, instead of just one
moment in time, and in my experience it tends to look less staged and
stiff.

I’ve been using Clip Studio Paint (aka Manga Studio 5) for the last 2 years and I really cannot recommend it enough. It has the smoothness and blending of SAI, a really good brush system and some of Photoshop’s capabilities without the heaviness of the software. I mean, what more could you want?

Unfortunately I feel like the UI deters some people from using it (including my friends…). I can see why and I have to admit the default layout looks a little overwhelming in the beginning. On the bright side, CSP is incredibly flexible with its settings and there are many ways to adapt it to suit what you’re accustomed to. In my case, I wanted something more similar to SAI to make the software transition smoother (old habits die hard I guess).

* There’s a note at the end of this post with a download link to my layout and
hotkey settings, plus instructions on how to enable it.

I hope this helps people who feel somewhat lost when they open the program for the first time ><

First things first: Close everything you don’t want and drag panels around. Re-arrange everything however you want, even down to tool order. Actually, most of this post may come off as common sense, but I think it still helps to have a rough idea of what exactly you can do with CSP if you find yourself just not getting into it at all.

This is the default:

My current layout:

After that, there are four areas of settings you need to check on, under File:

Preferences

From the Preferences you can edit a lot of options regarding to how the software functions. From a UI and general ease-of-use standpoint, these are the key points you might want to look at:►Interfacetab: You can change the UI to have a light or dark colour using a slider, from a really light gray to really dark gray (almost black, similar to Photoshop CS6 default)

► Cursor tab: You can change what the cursor looks like when selecting certain tools.► Layer/Frame tab: You can change the naming convention for when you duplicate a layer, and you can also set layer folders to [Through] layer mode as a default, instead of [Normal] layer mode.► Ruler/Unit tab: For changing the guide lines for when you set rulers, also setting the default units you want to use (px or mm)► Canvastab: Under ‘Scale’ and ‘Angle’ you can set the zoom and rotate levels the zoom and rotate buttons snap to.

Shortcut Settings

This is pretty self-explanatory and if you’ve modified Photoshop hotkeys, the window might look familiar. If you use hotkeys heavily like me, I recommend you look through it thorougly since some hotkeys might be different from what you’re used to or don’t have a hotkey set to it at all. You can set hotkeys to anything on the main menu, various general options (like increasing/decreasing brush size and main>sub colour switching), specific tools (even custom brushes) and auto actions.Settings I recommend checking, mostly because these are what I personally care about:

Option:Drawing color > Switch main color and sub colorDrawing color > Switch to transparent color… Or any of the different combinations they have, depending on what you want. Unlike PS and SAI, CSP has a third colour option available, which is ‘transparent’, so you can ‘paint’ using transparency, which functions pretty much like the eraser without needing to change tools.

Modifier Key Settings

This is a pretty important part to stop by because it affects how you use your tools. Basically, for each tool, you can set what happens when you hold Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Spacebar or use the mouse wheel. With Photoshop and SAI, you may be used to normally having the colour picker / eyedropper when you hold Alt, and moving the layer’s contents when you hold Ctrl. Some of CSP’s default values of these shortcut keys are different, and I recommend getting a feel for the tools you use and changing these settings as you go.

To change a brush to eyedropper while holding Alt:► Select ‘Settings for each process of tool’, and under ‘Sub Tool’ select which specific tool you want.► Under the 'Alt’ dropdown, select 'Change tool temporarily’, then click the Settings button. Select 'Eyedropper’ and click OK. (You don’t have to go all the way down the list of settings, unless you want to refine i
t to a more specific function)

To change to move layer while holding Ctrl:► Do the same except under 'Ctrl’, select ’ Change tool temporarily’ to 'Move layer’.

Other settings from the drop down:► For Shift, you can go to 'Tool aux. operation’ on the dropdown, and check the 'Straight line’ box to make straight lines that connect clicks when you hold Shift.

There are more so please look at the list carefully if you find yourself needing something regarding those key holds.

Command Bar Settings

The command bar is the strip at the top with all the icons, just above the canvas tab. Basically you
can put a bunch of shortcuts there of anything in the main menu. It’s really up to you. For mine, I keep the View > Rotate > Flip Horizontal icon on there so I can tell if my canvas is mirrored (because sometimes I forget the canvas is flipped and only realise when I’ve saved and looked at the pic). I also put the icons of all the correction layers I use the most, and the Layer > Combine selected layers icon since my Ctrl+E is already taken up by Merge with layer below.

Additional general notes on navigating and setting up CSP:

► I recommend checking out everything under the Window menu, you might find a really handy panel that isn’t normally open, o
r you can even disable the Command Bar if you want. I like to keep the Information tab somewhere on the side so I can see if I’ll start lagging any time soon because of big files (lol).

► The Sub View panel is also really useful that it works as a box to place reference images in. You can open an entire folder there and scroll through using the arrows. You can set it so that every time you hover over the panel, the eyedropper is automatically on (handy!)

► Brush settings are accessible through this little wrench here at the bottom right corner of the tool property panel.

► Speaking of brushes, you can select which options are visible in the tool property panel by enabling the eye button.

► Each panel has this menu button. You’ll find even more display options there such as enabling/disabling panel-specific icon bars, ch
anging the size of brush tiles, etc.

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TL;DR:Anyways, if you are too lazy to do this all yourself, you can just download my workspace file and open it yourself.Everything I’ve written about here (shortcuts, modifier keys, etc.) I’ve set to suit habits I’ve formed from using PS and SAI over the years. If you are in the same situation then I hope this will come in handy as a base for your own settings!

I couldn’t even include all of the reference boards this blog contains on this photoset. That’s right! There’s EVEN MORE! There are pages and pages of them! It is an inspiration treasure trove!Bookmark this link!Fill your life with inspiration!